From the very beginning of the abomination that is the American war in Iraq, imperial courtiers have pushed the same line: every act of mass slaughter in the occupied land was actually an encouraging development — a sign that the insurgents were "getting desperate," that "dead-enders" were launching last-gasp efforts, unable to derail the bounty of liberty and peace that America's paternal goodness had bestowed upon the Iraqi people.

This has held true from the first suicide attacks following George W. Bush's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" in the spring of 2003 and all through the mounting violence that has claimed more than a million innocent lives. The only exception was during the height of the genocidal fury of 2006, when the forces unleashed and empowered and assisted by the American occupiers carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against fierce resistance. The American elite suffered a slight wobble at that point, putting together a conclave of worthies in the "Iraq Study Group" to suggest ways to tamp down the raging PR disaster. (And that's all there was to the ISG plan; they were never going to pull out of Iraq.) The whole episose could be seen as yet another sorry chapter in the saga of the ghoulish, goonish family that somehow came to hold sway in American affairs for almost three decades, with Daddy Bush's factotums guiding the ISG, while Junior Bush brushed them off and consulted his own little circle of militarist agitators to find a way to continue the war but get it off the front pages.

This was, of course, the famous "surge," which saw a fresh influx of not-so-fresh American troops, blanketing the country and helping consolidate the gains of the ethnic cleansing campaign for the occupier's favored factions. The ultimate result was the violent demographic shift — including the forced migration of 4 million people — and mass murder that is the foundation of the American-propped Maliki regime. Its sole purpose was to ensure that the war continued, and that the American military presence could be more deeply embedded in the client state.

The levels of violence did drop from the horrific heights of 2006 and 2007 — again, partly because the American-assisted ethnic cleansing had been so successful. (In much the same way, there was a significant drop in Nazi violence against Jews in, say, Poland — after the Nazis had killed most of the Jews in Poland.) But the violence in Iraq never went away; the conquered land remained one of the most dangerous places on earth, and very few of the 4 million refugees felt safe enough to return home. (And in many cases, their "ethnically cleansed" homes were no longer available to them.) And of course, the million dead are still dead — and the millions more maimed, broken, ruined, grieved and traumatized are still suffering.

And now that the Americans and their Iraqi clients have reneged on their payoff deal with the Sunni insurgents they bribed to keep quiet during the surge, we are seeing the inevitable "uptick" in violence (to borrow Joe Biden's atrociously dismissive term for the coming slaughter in Obama's Afghanistan "surge"). More than 150 people have been killed in just two bombings of Shi'ite sites in the past five days.

"Despite the fact that you've seen sporadic high-profile attacks still taking place in Iraq, the overall security climate is a good one and we remain at all-time lows."

"All-time lows" means that, on average, "only" a few dozen or more are murdered in war-spawned violence each and every month of the year. The Obama mouthpiece then tried to blame the "sporadic" mass slaughters on the "Status of Forces Agreement," which calls for American troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities by the end of June. This is all part of an overall "withdrawal" plan concocted by the Bush Regime and their client Maliki, and adopted, with only the slightest modifications, by Barack Obama as his own. Naturally, both the "withdrawal from cities" this month and the promised "withdrawal of all combat troops" from the country in August 2010 are riddled with "exceptions." For example, Americans will remain thoroughly ensconced in strategic points inside the city of Baghdad (not least in the massive Crusader fortress they are building in the Green Zone), while continuing to "assist" Iraqi military operations in all Iraqi cities. And of course, the long-range "withdrawal" plan will leave tens of thousands of American troops on the ground in Iraq — again, "assisting" and "training" Iraqi forces.

The recent "uptick" (and yes, Morrell used that very word in his spin session) is just part of the endless ebb and flow of death that the bipartisan American war on Iraq has set in motion. These bloodsoaked tides will continue to "surge" across the conquered land as the years of America's military implantation drag on and on — and no doubt for long afterward.